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Another small update. I gave given the cockpit a light wash, just to dirty it up a little bit, and add some contrast to the varying surfaces. Not much will be visible, so I didn't want to darken it at all with the wash, so kept it to the recesses as best I could.

As you can see from the last photo below, my first attempts at scribing the panel lines were not very neat. I tried using electrical tape stacked on masking, and doing it freehand, but neither worked. This is why there has been a delay in updates. I couldn't carry on like this and needed a solution. Unfortunately, the recycling had been collected a few days prior, so I was unable to raid it for some plastic card substitute, so that's what I needed, plastic card, or demo tape.

Last night I managed to get to another small local stationary store and they had this tucked away in a corner for $15nzd. I'm glad I didn't buy any from NZs version of ebay as it turns out, almost all Demo tape is laminated paper, or just paper, and reacts to heat rather than the old embossing way it worked when I was a lad. These are explicitly called embossing tapes, so if anyone is looking for any, that I think is the keyword.

Here goes, my first try using the tape as a guide. As with my first attempts, i've lightly sanded the raised panel line so it sits flat, but so there is a slight mark where it used to be. I've then aligned the tape with this line and triple checked it is parallel with the existing raised lines.

My neatly scribed panel line, next to the not so good ones. These are on the underside, and I will see how they come out after they have some paint on before deciding whether to fill and redo them. I'm quite please at how the scribed line came out with the tape as a guide. Of the methods I tried it's definitely the best option. It's not perfect by a long shot, but it's a huge improvement over the first few, and so the rest is just practice and understanding how to use the tools.

Here is one of the finished tail sections.

And that's as far as I got before running out of time. Hopefully, I'll get a bit more time over the weekend to finish the panel lines.

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Sorry for the lack of updates. My father came to visit from the UK, and was his first time over here in NZ, so the wife and I took some time off work and took him on a tiki tour around the South Island.

A couple of off topic pics I took. (Hope you don't mind me sharing)?

Anyway, excuses and distractions done, after getting back from the airport drop off and farewell I got all my stuff back out of the cupboards and tried to figure out where I'd got to. I finished off the last of the panel lines, filled lots of large gaps, and assembled and cleaned the other parts.

Next I got an undercoat on so that I could better see what else needed filling and where I'd really mucked up the panel lines. To my surprise the panel lines weren't that bad, and I have gone round and filled some more gaps that weren't as obvious with filler. I had gone a bit off course with some of the scribing and so I have filled those with a small amount of thin super glue. Need to let the filler cure before I can do too much more.

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After several, sand, fill, prime and repeat sessions, I finally accepted that it wasn't going to be perfect. I learnt a lot in the process about scribing, filling and sanding though so it wasn't a complete waste of time I guess.

After a light grey undercoat, I pre-shaded (forgot to take a photo, sorry) using a dark grey. Next onto the Tamiya XF-5 green. Once dry, I masked the red and yellow areas that I decided to paint rather than use the decals for, and I'm now waiting for the red to dry, so tomorrow's task will be the yellow on the front side of the engines.

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Glad to see you are using XF-5, to my eye its as good as any other green to represent TB2. I've seen others use 'Applejack Green' but that is in my mind just too yellow.

Needless to say it wasn't my idea to use XF-5... someone may have mentioned it before in one of their builds, such as a new Thunderbird 2 and 4 build. @Kallisti was his name I think. For those that haven't seen, the build is here and it's got loads of great advice and help in it for both the new version and this one.

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Another small update. Yellow paint on, masking off and... paint came with it. Not too much, just a few bits here and there. Only on the Tamiya acrylic though, the Vallejo acrylics stayed on. I've also noticed that the masking has affected the colour/finish of the Tamiya, but not the Vallejo? As it's my first time using Tamiya, and all their other products are awesome (It's their masking tape I use exclusively), I'm left wondering what it is I could have done wrong. Perhaps I didn't allow enough time for the Tamiya to set? With Vallejo I'm use to a pretty fast drying time, and the red was on for a substantially shorter time before being masked than the green, so I'm not sure? Thoughts?

Anyway, here she is. The missing bits of paint need touching up and I need to get in to those engine intakes with the hairy stick to finish them off nicely, but I can feel it getting closer each time, even if I can only give her 30-40 mins at a time at the moment.

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Slow progress on this so far, but thank you everybody for the likes, comments, advice and support so far. I really do appreciate all of it, and I'll be back on this in the coming days. The pods are requiring a lot of filling and sanding to get the top and bottom halves to meet in such a way that there's no noticeable join. With all 4 of them requiring this I'm finding it somewhat demoralising, so while the filler dries I've moved on to a spot of painting 1/56 scale Italian ww2 armour... you know, as one does at a time like this. I have however, just received shipment of metal colour copper, which I will use on TB2's legs. The gold I had mixed up was just too light and, well, gold like and as a result just didn't look right. Especially so, as in a case of Mandela effect, I found myself recalling the legs being an aluminium/silver finish?!

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Finally, an update. Pods have all had their panel lines sanded flat and then rescribed before being assembled, primed and painted (with the exception of TB4's, which is scribed, and the internal ramp assembled and primed, but is still in two halves awaiting detail painting). TB2 and the pods have just now received a coat of future ready for decals and then panel washes and weathering.

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A bit of a longer break from this than I anticipated, but I'm trying to get it all finished before the first imminent expansion to my family. A little Kiwi of my own arriving at the end of June.

I'm ready to apply some decals, but I can't figure out where on earth (or on TB2) most of the decals go! If anyone can lend a hand, either from recognition, or from having made the kit themselves, I'd be grateful. I'm sure that between us we can figure it out?

I can't find decals 3, 14 or 17 to 24 mentioned anywhere in the instructions.